1. How did you get started on the AFTERMATH project?
2. How did you get the idea to do a photographic archive?
3. Why do you think it’s important to have a photographic archive of the recovery efforts at Ground Zero?
4. What do you think the general public does not know about the aftermath?
5. How do you think the photos in AFTERMATH will be remembered over time?
6. Has this work ever been exhibited?
7. What is the story behind the cover of AFTERMATH?
8. How is the book organized?
9. What did you learn from this body of work?
10. What feedback have you received?
11. How does this body of work relate to your 40+-year career as a photographer?
12. What is the last photo in the book?
13. Tourists are still flocking to Ground Zero to try to make sense of what happened. What would you tell someone today who is now looking into a blank space?

1. How did you get started on the AFTERMATH project?

JM: A couple days after the attacks, I went down to the site and saw that the whole area had been cordoned off with cyclone fencing. Out of a lifetime of habit I raised my camera to my eye, and then someone smacked me on my shoulder. A cop yelled, “No photographs buddy, this is a crime scene.” I said “Listen, this is a public space, don’t tell me I can’t look through my camera!” Then she pointed to the press roped off by police tape behind me. I said, “When are they going in?” She said, “Never, I told you, no photography!” Sometimes life gives you just the push you need. They couldn’t do this to us. No photographs meant no visual record. As I walked away that day I knew what I had to do. I was going to get in there and make an archive of the aftermath. That was the beginning of the following nine months of my life down at Ground Zero.

2. How did you get the idea to do a photographic archive?

JM: I was influenced by the work of the Farm Securities Administration during the Great Depression. Photographers like Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange took thousands of photographs that are now housed at the Library of Congress and are some of the most iconic and important photos ever taken in America. These photographers defined what it looked like during that time in history and most importantly, preserved the faces of the people struggling to survive. I knew that it was wrong for the city to ban photographers from recording the aftermath because if there were no photographs, there would be no way to share this piece of history with future generations.

3. Why do you think it’s important to have a photographic archive of the recovery efforts at Ground Zero?

JM: I don’t think it was just important, I thought it was essential. I wanted people to experience the site viscerally, to see for themselves what they couldn’t experience in actuality .You can’t go back in time but you can explore the past through photography. I could capture the site the way it looked to me and the people who were working down there day after day. A photo archive could make visible for the entire country, and the rest of the world, the consequences of a national disaster and the incredible response by the hundreds of people that worked at the site.

4. What do you think the general public does not know about the aftermath?

JM: I think the public would be surprised to know of the intense camaraderie at Ground Zero. It was a job of unimaginable proportions that was being approached with the can-do spirit America is famous for. Each person down there was so committed to heal the wounds and make a difference. They sifted through rubble like archeologists to find any remains or personal items that might be identified as belonging to someone who was lost. One photo in the book explains it all on page 319 called “a worker in a raking field.” It’s the last day of the clean up efforts and there is a worker, after his shift was over, alone on his hands and knees in the fading light. With his hands he is turning over debris. He is lost in the moment, devoted to the task all the way to the end. Over nine months, four million pounds of debris was sifted through and then taken out of the site. It was a remarkable feat.

5. How do you think the photos in AFTERMATH will be remembered over time?

JM: That’s hard to say but I can tell you how I hope they will be remembered. I hope the general public will understand that 9/11 was so much more than one tragic day. When I made the photographs, I was working as both an artist and a historian. I had to make aesthetic decisions but in the end the goal was not to make “pretty” pictures of the destruction but to record—with meticulous, archival precision—what happened to all of lower Manhattan in the aftermath of 9/11, so future generations might better grasp the intensity of the effort. Fifty years from now, I think people will see not only the destruction but how everyone rallied to the cause to help do what they could to make things right.

6. Has this work ever been exhibited?

JM: In 2002, thanks to Colin Powell, there was a large international traveling exhibition, “After September 11: Images from Ground Zero,” which traveled to more than 200 cities in 60 countries, reaching over 3.5 million people.  The archive is also now part of the permanent collection of the Museum of the City of New York where it is available for research, exhibition and publication.

This year, a selection of photos from the book will be exhibited in select venues across the country, including the Mobile Museum of Art, Huntsville Museum of Art and The Newberry Library in Chicago. For the 5th anniversary on September 11th, large scale images will be exhibited at The New York Public Library.

7. What is the story behind the cover of AFTERMATH?

JM: This image was one of the first photographs I took at Ground Zero. It was on September 24th, the second day I was down there with my camera. That evening I befriended some detectives from the NYPD Arson and Explosion Squad who took me up to one of the nearby buildings so I could see the massive scope of what the towers had become. Many of the photos I made at Ground Zero during the eight months that followed revealed an accidental beauty, but the cover photo directly reflects the very real and tragic nature of the event, and marks the beginning of the aftermath and the beginning of my experience.

8. How is the book organized?

JM: The book is organized in chronological order and features 400 images with stories of my experience woven throughout. It begins with a series of photos that I took of the World Trade Center from the window of my studio in Chelsea, over a period of 15 years. I organized it seasonally (“Fall,” “Winter” and “Spring”) to show the passage of time and how the site looked and changed day after day. In the first part of the book, it’s all about the buildings, the steel and the human scale. The images reflect how the site physically looked from all corners and perspectives. Then, as time passes, and the wreckage disappears, the people begin to emerge. I want the reader to share the experience of the site starting full and literally becoming empty. In result, the latter half of the book features portraits, background stories of who was down there, and all the little surprises that happened every day at the site.

9. What did you learn from this body of work?

JM: I learned, first of all, that if you have a desire, an idea about doing something socially useful, and resistance is put in your way by bureaucracies, you must insist that you can’t take “no” for an answer. I refused to go away and let the record become invisible. I learned that the individual’s voice does count.

10. What feedback have you received?

JM: I have been incredibly touched by the response to the work. I have received loving, generous comments from people all over the world who have said essentially the same thing, “I felt as if I were there.” No artist could ask for more. It was not about making Art. It was about being the “resident eye” inside, looking at it for everyone, and bringing the place forward for others to experience.

11. How does this body of work relate to your 40+-year career as a photographer?

JM: There are instincts that I’ve cultivated over the past forty years, but I’ve never used my senses like this before. My previous work was more playful, or ironic, or simply filled with the wonders of place and nature. Although awe played a big part of that awesome space inside Ground Zero, there was a weight attached to the making of the photographs that made me more conscious of the historical function they must serve. I became conscious of my responsibility to pay attention to everything that might be useful sometime in the future.

12. What is the last photo in the book?

JM: I took the last photo on June 21, 2002, when I returned to the site on the longest day of the year. I crossed over the PATH train tracks near where the last column had stood. There, in the shadow of a railroad tie, some tender shoots of grass were making there way up through the rubble. It gave me an opportunity to reflect on the act of healing.

13. Tourists are still flocking to Ground Zero to try to make sense of what happened. What would you tell someone today who is now looking into a blank space?

JM: I would say that patience is part of the healing and rebuilding process. A sense of patience was there, throughout the recovery, in every bit of rubble that was turned over by hand. I would remind people that some day, out of this emptiness, and through the mix of public and civic endeavor, a new place will finally emerge to reflect the feelings of those who lost and those who searched.